Currently, it is increasingly recognized that field experiences improve how teachers and students understand interactions and processes in an ecosystem.  When incorporated into the science curriculum, these experiences would facilitate bringing this understanding into the classroom. In Puerto Rico, the public education system is based on old and outdated environmental science curricula that do not include formal field experiences. To compensate for this lack, Puerto Rico Teaching Ecosystem Complexity through field science inquiry (PR-TEC) has introduced local science teachers to the scientific method through field experiences. For this, we developed a 2009 workshop aimed to enhance teacher’s understanding of the relationship between climate and vegetation.  We evaluated teacher’s knowledge and perception of this relationship before and after the workshop.  We also visited two kinds of forests with contrasting climate regimes and vegetation types.  In these forests we measured climate and vegetation using several protocols found at www.ecoplexity.org.

Results/Conclusions

We present the collected data, and how understanding of interactions and processes improved during the workshop.